Leap and Do Work You Love
These guys are a HUGE reason why putting up a startup has become cheaper and much more efficient.
I actually currently use ALL the tools from 1-10.
Wow, Google has been helping us a lot eh? So many Google tools here.
I’ll be checking out the trending tools as well – some look quite useful.
Got some online tools you’re finding awesome? Do share it below!
After finishing a good book, I typically lie back, savor the moment, and say to myself, “that was a good book.” Then I try to think of ways of applying what I learned in different aspects of my life.
In the middle of finishing Tony Hsieh’s (pronounced “shay”) super cool book, Delivering Happiness, I HAD to talk about it to my team immediately. This book makes you want to jump out and change the way you do things. This is a great book.
Structurally, the book talks about 2 main things in sequence:
a) Tony Hsieh’s personal entrepreneurial journey (he started out wanting to be the King of the Worms)
b) The rise of Zappos (an amazing story)
But the neat thing is, he makes the book into something of a reference/how-to by providing quick lists and ordered suggestions.
The result is something unique: the book tells an engrossing story while providing practical tips in a very informal, accesible manner.
Culture Matters
This was the overwhelming lesson which was tatooed in my mind as I was reading. Zappos made customer service their number one, put-our-money-where-our-mouths-are priority. The Zappos brand is now synonymous with customer service – which is the main reason for their success. The internet is riddled with people telling stories on how Zappos made their day with jaw-dropping customer service. (just google) After all, the goal of their every employee is to wow every customer and to “deliver happiness.”
The result? One billion dollar sales on just their 10th year of operations.
Every company would love to have this sort of customer service quality right? (well, maybe not)
Hsieh talks very transparently on how they achieved this: by focusing relentlessly on something a lot of firms ignore – culture.
“We may have 1200 to 1500 brand relationships and a good head start against the competition, but that can be copied. Our websites, policies – all can be copied, but not our special culture.”
Zappos’s competitive advantage is clearly their culture. Pause and consider this for just a minute, to help you realize how awesome it is.
Zappos has ten values which they passionately build their culture around:
Zappos 10 core values (p154)
- Deliver WOW through service
- Embrace and drive change
- Create fun and a little weirdness
- Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
- Pursue growth and learning
- Build open and honest relationship with communication
- Build a positive team and family spirit
- Do more with less (see more in further reading)
- Be passionate and determined
- Be humble
They are extremely passionate about these 10 things, and make key decisions and structures around them. Hsieh talks about rejecting highly talented individuals whom they knew would help the company out immediately, but rejected them because they didn’t fit the culture pillars above. That’s thinking long-term. That’s making sure the culture is protected.
Another amazing thing about recruitment? At the end of the recruitment process, once you pass everything, you’ll be offered $2000 if you decline the job. Yep, you read that right. To filter people who are only in it for the money, they offer a you $2000 to reject their offer. That’s literally putting money where your mouth is.
Throughout the book, Hsieh wows with dry wit, humility, honestly, and self-awareness.
Paradigm Shift
Part of the reason why this book resonated with me is my Human Resources background. Back in the day, I was the flag bearer for “Vision,” “Mission,” and “company values.”
Jumping into startups, I slowly felt that it mostly a crock of BS. Here’s the evidence. I felt it was how corporations “herded” their employees into docile sheep.
This book has singlehandedly shifted my paradigm, marrying my HR sensibilities with my entrepreneurial ones.
Vision and Values can be more than a plaque on the wall. Done right, it’s downright transformative.
Read this book now! (startup founders, HR people, customer service people – I can’t say enough how important this book is)
Last Saturday in Starbucks Masinag, I had a slightly different Startup Saturday meeting with Nico Policarpio, a promising young entrepreneur (whose team won the second Startup Weekend).
I was originally going to meet 2 other people, but they each had sudden emergencies, so I met with Nico one-on-one.
Partly as a result of the decreased number of people, the conversation went into deeper ground. Instead of the usual “let’s come up with an idea” or “let’s develop an idea” or “let’s map out current opportunities,” we instead delved into the philosophical – what drives us as entrepreneurs, taking a hold of who we are, and startup philosophy.
I won’t go into any of the details of our conversation, but let me highlight one very important theme:
Inner Before Outer
More than any other job in the planet, being an entrepreneur requires a tremendous amount of self-introspection and awareness.
Why?
A startup is basically an individual’s unique offering and contribution to the world. He’s basically saying, “Hey world, here’s what I can do, buy me!”
To be able to offer your best to the universe, you first have to figure out what it is, right?
A mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make is just going after the money. This produces a passionless startup which inevitably makes passionless products. Slow death.
Another is going after something “sexy,” – like perhaps forcing yourself to go into “mobile” or “social” even if it just isn’t you and it bores you to death. Destination Zombieland.
Another mistake is to go after everything you feel remotely interests you, ending up with 2-3 startups at the same time WHILE having a day job in some cases. Recipe for failure as what a startup needs MOST from you is time.
These mistakes are usually the product of a lack of proper introspection as to who you really are, what your gifts are, what you really want to do, what you consider to be your calling in this world. These mistakes are the product of choosing outer (ideas, opportunity, money) before choosing inner (who you are, introspection, Faith).
This is why I find the startup exercise such a Faith-walk.
I know most people don’t associate business with Faith, or business with God.
If you believe in God though, and you believe you have a specific Calling, it’s pretty difficult NOT to consider Faith when undergoing the entrepreneurial process.
Figuring out who you are in the world? Sounds like something God can help us out with, eh?
Align your life. Nothing will make you happier.
After the first Juan Great Leap (JGL) get-together last March, I decided to create a Facebook group (separate from the JGL page) for the growing community to get to know one another better, have a venue to exchange ideas and concepts, and simply to better help one another.
There were around 30 initial people in the group. I asked the group if they wanted to open up membership to everyone. It was collectively decided that the criteria for accepting members would be either: a) registration to a Juan Great Leap event, or b) subscription to the blog.
After the second Ayala-sponsored event a month ago, membership swelled to around 130.
Its become a pretty engaged group, with people tossing and sharing ideas very freely.
Since the Ayala event, there have been around 4-5 meetings between people who were passionate with the same startup concept. Some startups are being conceptualized/built as we speak.
It’s really awesomely exciting!
Be part of the discussion (and don’t be just a lurker)! There are some really helpful people in the group who can give you great insight about your startup (for free).
And no, again, I won’t spam you with a thousand emails or sell your address if you subscribe. I would never do that. What you’ll receive is the weekly newsletter from me talking about the posts here and some updates. That’s it.
Join the group here! (and subscribe first)
I’ve recently been talking to some of the incubators that have sprouted in Manila.
Let me tell you, we’ve come a long way from the “I want 80% of your startup since I’m shouldering all the risk!” we’ve always heard from angels and investors when we tried to raise money before.
If your team is top-notch and your idea is sound, you CAN get funding now for much less equity. Investors are getting to be more sophisticated. Plus I think there are more investors now who were startup founders themselves, so they know they’ll never partner with real entrepreneurs if they insist on majority shares.
I will always, always advocate bootstrapping as much as possible (at least to start), but if your idea direly needs funding, you will find it just a bit easier to raise money now.
So okay, let’s recap:
Funding = easier.
Ideas = a dime a dozen.
Startup support infrastructure = getting better.
So why haven’t we seen an AVALANCHE of startups? What’s the bottleneck?
If I take into account the number of people who are looking for co-founders, the number of people I know who are fence-sitting in corporate waiting for the “right opportunity,” and the same (great) people I see in startup circles and meetups – then the answer is pretty obvious: it’s the lack of people who are willing to take the leap.
C’mon people. You know who you are.
Don’t be like the proverbial torpe who lived the rest of his life wishing he asked the girl out.
It’s been close to a year now that I wrote this post.
In it, I lamented at how poor the startup support was in our country. I compared our startup scene to that of our neighboring countries and complained.
Then, almost on cue, all the activity started.
The first Startup Weekend was launched and was followed by another in a few months. Major startup incubators sprouted: Ideaspace, Kickstart, and Wireless Wings. Startup meetups were being organized here and there. Social media became the megaphone fledgling startups used to broadcast their stories. Various startup-centric web magazines have been founded, just in the last couple of months.
Almost overnight, the amount of support available to startups and its owners increased exponentially.
There was NONE of this when I started. This is wonderful! We’re still a long way from where we want to be, but it’s a fantastic start. The energy is palpable! I’m SEEING more and more startups being formed as we speak.
After just 10 months, I’ve gone from complaining to commending. Go Pinoy startups!
Look out world, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!
PS: though I STILL think our schools could do a better job supporting potential entrepreneurs
Over the last 2 months, I have had an inordinate amount of conversations with friends who have migrated to other countries, very typically to get their MBA’s and then ending up working there.
The conversation invariably turns into “what’s the best way to help?”
In one of these talks, I was with my ex-boss and good friend, Elmer Velasquez. We managed to find time to grab breakfast during his weeklong visit here. Elmer finished his MBA in Columbia and now works in the executive search industry in the US. In his spare time, he runs Global Acumen, a social enterprise with the objective of doing knowledge transfer BACK to the Philippines.
He gave me a memorable line:
We have to stop looking at it as brain drain and start looking at it as the development of offshore resources.
The people who go are some of our best guys, right? Of the most capable people in your high school or college batch, what percentage left the country to pursue degrees and careers elsewhere?
You know what? I think a number of these people DO want to help out. Living in another country actually might spur even more felt patriotism in some people. Absence DOES make the heart fonder after all.
How can you help, you say?
What about supporting homegrown startup initiatives?
Okay, I might be biased, but I think this is THE best way to give back. We already know we’ve got an english-speaking, innovative, and tech-savvy workforce. We’ve got some of the best programmers, the best designers in the world. That’s a potential startup goldmine.
Perhaps you can help us in making Great Startup Leaps for Juan.
You want to invest in a startup? Lend your skills and expertise as a board member? Give meaningful advice? Well, we’ve got startups which need your help. Email me at peter@juangreatleap.com or simply hit reply! Let’s talk about it. Endless possibilities!
Also, don’t forget to SHARE this post to someone you know wants to help out. Let’s kill apathy!
(Subscribe to the Juan Great Leap newsletter and get invited to the super-engrossing private JGL-FB group!)
My whole entrepreneur life has been a series of episodes where my eyes were opened to a greater reality.
I can still remember when STORM collected its first payment back in 2005. My partner Pao and I gave a gaming company 2-weeks of access to our new online survey software for P5000. (which was completely, idiotically underpriced!)
But I remember the feeling.
“Someone paid us money for a product we made! OMG!”
After years in corporate, and knowing the salary as the only means of getting cash, it was quite the eye-opener.
It was like the very moment we got to know how to swim. At first, were scared of the water, right? We needed to hang on to the edge. At one point though, we just trusted and we let go. Then came a startling realization – that the water isn’t the enemy, after all. And then afterwards, all we wanted to do was swim around and around, explore, and test our limits.
After getting our feet wet with P5000, we wanted to do so much more.
In 2006, I remember when I had to kick STORM out of my condo because I just got married, and well, it would have been awkward if the living room was still going to be full of computers and employees.
So Pao and I rented out a small place for STORM – no more than the size of a conference room – at San Antonio Village in Pasig. We then we got ourselves our first set of “real” office furniture. I remember when we were first putting the furniture in the office. Pao and I couldn’t get rid of the smiles on our faces, even if we were shelling out major moolah and now had to pay rent. We had an office! In our minds, a foundation had been built – STORM could stand on its own.
Another moment when some of my blinders came off was in 2007 when STORM landed a big account in competition with two large multinational player. It further opened my eyes that a startup can be much more than a mom and pop, if you choose to do so.
Whenever I would have blinder-dissolving moments like these, I would have trouble sleeping (my friends would know this) because my mind would be on overdrive. I would be imagining the endless possibilities in a new reality – one where previous horizons have been pushed back.
My big fulltime leap in 2008 scratched a huge blinder – that I needed to work in a corporation to survive. It was liberating, in all sense of the word.
I think I grew addicted to the process, so now I SEEK opportunities where I can disentangle myself from even more blinders. 2008 was when I started reading startup and entrepreneurial books like crazy. Actually, I find that a good book – fiction or otherwise – will always result in blinders crashing down. Same goes to meeting new people. Or new experiences. Even failure.
Then I started realizing something – that there are indeed, no limits. The only limits would come from the limits we impose on ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously.
Remove those blinders. You can be all you want to be.
I bought Tim Ferriss’s book years ago because the title reeled me in. (it was also a bestseller and I’m a sucker for bestsellers – amazingly, it’s still topping the charts up to now)
Really? 4 Hours of work? Sign me up now!
It’s a quick read which can be summarized in the acronym DEAL.
Basically, it says:
D – Definition (find out what you really want)
E – Elimination (applying the 80-20 Pareto principle on work hours, Tim concludes that you get 80% of the benefits through just 20% of what you actually do – so the solution? Find out what the useless 80% is comprised of and eliminate them)
A – Automation (building sustainable, automatic income using stuff like Google Adwords, automation, etc… and then using outsourced virtual assistants to free yourself from the day-to-day minutiae)
L – Liberation (the endgoal. this means you’ve freed yourself from the confines of set geography and time using E & A successfully)
Throughout the book, Tim talks about his fascinating travels and adventures (even becoming a kickboxing champ by thinking out of the box and bending rules). After reading the book, I remember feeling energized and telling myself, “I want to do that! I want to go around the world and just spend 4 hours on my job!”
After five years and one great entrepreneurial leap, I find myself saying, “No, I don’t want to do that anymore.”
I think the underlying assumption of the book is that you WANT to escape. That actual work is something demeaning – you have to escape it and minimize it as much as you can. Then you can go off and live out your adventure.
But what if I told you work CAN be your adventure? Would you still want to escape from it?
I remember reading in a Seth Godin book about this incident where he was in a resort on some island, and he got his laptop out and began to work on some stuff. He said some people were looking at him with faces saying, “Look at that poor guy, he can’t escape from his work.” Then Seth said something like, “You don’t understand, unlike you, I don’t have anything to escape from, I love what I’m doing!”
I think we ALL need something to work on, more specifically, something to BUILD. The problem isn’t work per se, but the type of work we are choosing (yes, choosing – no one’s forcing you to work on that zombie job) to do. Majority of us are just miscast. Find something you love. Find something you’d choose to do in a resort. (and yes, now, more than ever, working on a passion IS a practical choice)
Yes, it’s good to dream of going around the world, but let’s separate the desire to travel with the desire to escape.
Funny thing is, if you would look at Tim’s accomplishments now, you’d see he’s published multiple bestselling books, is an avid angel investor, and promotes his personal brand through different media.
I’d bet he’s having the time of his life working much, much more than 4 hours a week.
A few weeks ago, my wife posted “what’s a good ramen place?” on her Facebook account. We love ramen and wanted to find out if anything new was out there.
She was besieged with a score of answers. She got the usual suspects – like Ramen Bar and Ajisen Ramen. Then we noticed an answer which was met with near-universal approval from her friends – Tamagoya Noodle House. Apparently, it was a small, obscure ramen place in Antipolo which gets crowded fast.
(How can we say no to that?! Resistance = futile)
And you know what? We went and just loved it. We’re now frequent customers.
More than ever, we have been consulting Google less and less and our friends on our social networks more and more. We are now doing social searches. Social media has transformed everything. Armed with networked mobile phones with high resolution cameras, experiences can be shared automatically and spread out like wildfire across multiple social networks. (this is a large reason why being an entrep now is so enticing – we do a good job and people spread it around)
I can attest to this in a very personal way. STORM has never had a marketing executive. How do we get leads? Word of mouth. These last two years have been record-breaking for STORM. Why? Social media-powered word of mouth.
On the other end of the spectrum, most brands are now on the social networks as well. Did you just have a sucky customer service experience? You can now post them on brand pages and broadcast it to the world. You can write an open letter to the President and post on Facebook. If it was an especially nasty experience, it WILL get spread and force a company to react.
The power has come back all the way to the consumer. Every person is now a powerful voice.
In this 2.0 era, there is now NO CHOICE but to treat every customer like royalty. We have no choice but to deliver truly authentic customer experiences. We cannot put parrots on our customer service teams anymore. We have to deliver on every promise and empower frontliners to truly HELP, not merely to placate. Just check this out for an example of how NOT to do things. How to properly do things? Check Zappos out. They are amazing.
I have a million customers! How can I help every single one?
Social media plus hustling. Answer every inquiry like a human being. You know, when I think of it, when I call to complain about a service, I usually just want to be heard and have the assurance someone is actively helping me out. What I hate most? Scripts.
(Oh, and if you have a million customers you can afford to hire a good team to take care of customer service.)
If we make mistakes, we have to live with the fact that they will be public – but we can show the world we can rise to the challenge of getting better (and the world WILL love you for it – they can relate).
Guess what? This forces us to be better firms. Forces us to create better products and services. Forces us to step up.
Big Brother is there not merely for the Carabuenas of this world, but customer experiences as well.
But defending our brand is just the tip of the iceberg!
Stop for a second and imagine…you can talk directly to ALL your customers!
That is an amazing thought. Think of the dialogue you could create. Brand loyalty. Are you the CEO of a startup? Think of what your consumers would feel like if you made friends with some of them over social media. Think of the free market research you can do. Think of the cross product marketing you can achieve.
It’s a brave new world just dripping with opportunity.
JUAN GREAT LEAP 